War Stories: Book One Page 4

  “Hell if I know,” Mark said with a shrug. “I’m just the liaison officer. All I know about language is that my universal translator mostly works.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Here we are, Mr. Faulwell.”

  “Please, it’s Bart. Hell, if you want to be formal, it’s ‘Dr. Faulwell,’ but that just makes me feel like a stuffy old academic.” He grinned. “Of course, I am a stuffy old academic, but that doesn’t mean I want everyone to think I am.”

  “Bart it is, then. And I’m Lieutenant Commander Mark. Or ‘sir.’” He held the straight face for about a second. “Or ‘hey you.’ I answer to all three.”

  “Hey you, it is. Where is this meeting at 1900?”

  “The wardroom. The computer can direct you.”

  “Great. Thanks, Commander Hey You.”

  Mark shook his head. “You’re welcome, Bart.”

  Three weeks later, Bart Faulwell and his team were no closer to a solution than they were when they started.

  The meeting on Bart’s first day hadn’t taken too terribly long. Everyone introduced or reintroduced themselves to their newest boss. Novac and Throckmorton were truly a pair, finishing each other’s sentences and talking over each other. T’Lura said very little, but her few comments were incisive. This was in direct contrast to Phrebington, who had several dozen ideas, only some of them worthwhile. And then there was Janíce Kerasus, a frail old human woman who looked like she would keel over at any second.

  Bart was sitting in his quarters, going over the latest samples Starfleet Intelligence had provided, these from the few Klingon ships that had survived the attack on Avinall VII. They’d been working for days on end with no progress. Bart hadn’t realized that running this team would mostly consist of playing den mother to a bunch of opinionated specialists. Bart had always enjoyed the research for its own sake and for the intellectual rewards you generally got at the end. This group, though, was more interested in justifying their own preexisting theories. Phrebington mostly expounded on his own ideas about everything, whether or not they related to reality; Kerasus spent most of her time poking holes in Phrebington’s theories (not a difficult task, as Bart had encountered Swiss cheese with fewer holes than the Gnalish’s ideas about cryptography, but Kerasus applied herself to that particular task with special glee), and Novac and Throckmorton were in their own world and had to be repeatedly reminded that there were four other people involved. T’Lura was the only one who had been easy to work with, as she shared with Bart the love of research for its own sake—though, naturally, she didn’t express it as overtly as Bart did.

  “Mark to Faulwell.”

  Only when he almost fell out of his chair, startled, did Bart even realize that he had fallen asleep at his desk. Bart had always preferred to work at his own pace and simply catch naps where he could, but Commander DuVall insisted on a more rigid schedule, and the rest of the team was already locked into it, so Bart was stuck with it as well. It was playing merry hell with his admittedly eccentric circadian rhythm.

  “Faulwell here. What can I do for you, Hey You?”

  “Bart, no offense, but that joke stopped being funny the first eight hundred times.”

  The next words came out of Bart’s mouth unplanned. “Tell you what—meet me for dinner tonight and I’ll stop.”

  “All right, then, it’s a date.”

  Bart blinked. Then he blinked again. My God, he said yes. He was already in shock at himself for asking in the first place—which he chalked up to exhaustion lowering his resistance—but Mark actually said yes.

  “Bart, you there?”

  “Uh, yeah. What say we meet at that Trill restaurant at, ah—” he checked the chronometer on his desk “—1930?”

  “Will do.”

  “Great.”

  “That’s not why I called.”

  “No, you called to remind me that DuVall wants my evening report in ten minutes and I better get it to him before he gives me the evil eye.”

  “His eye isn’t evil, it’s just misguided. Even so, I’d rather it wasn’t guided at you.”

  “Not to worry, Commander Hey You, he’ll have it on time. I even made sure I spelled all the words right this time.”

  “You said you’d stop that if I met you for dinner.” Mark’s voice sounded mock-petulant.

  “You haven’t actually met me for dinner yet. I know you officer types, always making promises to us enlisted folk. I want proof.”

  Mark laughed. “Fine. I’ll see you at 1930.”

  “The problem,” Bart said between mouthfuls of the yellow-leaf salad the Trills called grakizh, “is that there isn’t anything to work from. Anytime you’ve got a code, there’s some kind of base for it. Something to build off of. Every Dominion code up until now has had similar algorithms at the root. Or at least similar enough that we could extrapolate something. Sometimes we’ve been lucky enough to stumble into things, and sometimes they’ve been careless. But this latest one—it just doesn’t match anything—no mathematical or linguistic pattern we’ve seen before, from the Dominion, from the Breen, from the Cardassians. It’s a big mess.”

  “Sounds it,” Mark said, leaning back in his chair, having long since finished his meal by dint of not being able to get a word in edgewise.

  “I’m sorry,” Bart said sheepishly. “I’ve been talking shop all night.”

  Mark grinned. “That’s all right—I would’ve just spent the whole meal bitching and moaning about Commander DuVall. This is a nice reminder that other people have problems, too.”

  “Yeah.” Bart took a bite of his grakizh.

  “Maybe the Dominion’s come up with an unbreakable code.”

  “No such thing—remember, if there’s no way to decode it, there’s no way the other side gets the message. Of course, it could just be something straightforward and simple and we’re overthinking it.” Bart chuckled. “Overthinking is definitely an occupational hazard with this bunch.”

  “Well, I hope for my sake you come up with something soon. DuVall got a very terse communiqué from Admiral Ross today and—well, let’s just say that the abused tend to kick downward.”

  Bart gave Mark a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Commander, but—”

  Mark laughed.

  “What?”

  “‘Commander’?”

  “Well, I can’t call you ‘hey you’ anymore. I promised.”

  Mark nodded. “Fair enough. Anthony will do, I think.”

  “Fine, Anthony.” Bart speared the last of his grakizh with his fork. “Actually, one of the more famous ‘unbreakable code’ stories was from Earth—the Second World War. One side’s code kept being broken by the other side, so instead of an actual code, they transmitted everything in an obscure language by a people they’d conquered over a century earlier. That ‘code’ was never broken during the hostili—” Bart cut himself off. “My stars and garters, I think that’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “We’re complete and total idiots.” He got up. “I’ve got to go. I may have stumbled onto the right track.”

  Mark grinned. “Then we both have to go.” He tapped his combadge. “Cryptography team, please report to the wardroom immediately.”

  “So you’re saying—what are you saying?” Phrebington said. The lizardlike Gnalish was standing in one corner of the wardroom, pointedly positioning himself as far from Kerasus as possible. The elderly human, for her part, sat placidly at the head of the wardroom table, with Throckmorton and Novac sitting to her left, T’Lura on her right. Anthony stood leaning against a rear bulkhead, with Bart sitting at the other head of the table.

  Bart leaned forward. “I’m saying that we need to try investigating a language from the Dominion that’s as obscure to us as the Navajo language was to the Axis powers in World War Two on Earth.”

  “Ah, yes, because, after all, we’ve had such tremendous cultural exchanges with them,” Phrebington said with a snort.

  “Mr. Phrebington�
�s sarcasm notwithstanding,” T’Lura said, “he is right. Our cultural information on the Dominion is limited.”

  “We know about their language, though,” Kerasus said in a voice that was at once paper-thin and rich with authority. Bart had spent the last several weeks wondering if he’d be able to pull that off when he was that old.

  “What do we possibly know about their language?” Phrebington asked sharply.

  Her tone now withering, Kerasus said, “Quite a bit, if you actually have paid attention to the recorded conversations and discussions involving the Founders, the Vorta, and other Dominion members. Untranslated, of course.”

  “What good would that do?” Novac asked, sounding confused.

  Throckmorton added, “It’s not like they’d use a language we’re familiar with for their code.”

  “If they had, we’d have found it weeks ago,” Phrebington said, “and I’d be back on Gnala where it’s safe.”

  Bart smiled a small smile. “If you give Janíce a chance, I’m sure she’ll elaborate.”

  Kerasus smiled right back. “Thank you, Bartholomew.” Bart generally hated being called by his full first name, but he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed when Kerasus did it. “My point is that it can’t be anything relating to the Founders or the Vorta in any case, because their actual language is too simplistic. The Founders didn’t even have a concept of vocal speech until they encountered solids. They communicate with each other through that Great Link of theirs, and only use a very basic spoken language—it’s the one they programmed into the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar as well. It makes them very easy to translate, which can be useful in diplomatic circumstances, though it makes for wretched poetry.”

  Bart laughed. So did Novac and Throckmorton and Anthony. Phrebington didn’t. (Neither did T’Lura, but that was to be expected.)

  “In any event,” Kerasus said, “that would explain why they haven’t used a purely linguistic base for their codes prior to this. The people running this war have only the simplest of linguistics to go on. It makes sense that only now, when we’ve done such a fine job of breaking through their codes, that they’re trying more esoteric methods.” The old woman’s breathing became more labored as she finished. “If we’re going to try this solution, we—we need to look to another—another member of the Dominion.”

  “Hadn’t we already established that?” Phrebington asked snidely.

  Anthony, meanwhile, walked over to where Kerasus was sitting. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded quickly. “Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit—a bit too much there.”

  “As I suspected,” Phrebington said, “talking too much will get the best of her.”

  Bart sighed. “The problem is, we don’t have any kind of cultural database on the Dominion member worlds. We can try to compare it to the ones we do have some records on from trips that ships made to the Gamma Quadrant, but I can’t imagine they’d have used anyone that was visited by an allied ship in the past.”

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate those languages,” Novac said.

  “Just to rule it out,” Throckmorton added.

  Nodding, Bart said, “You two handle that, then. I think Deep Space 9 has complete records of all the Gamma Quadrant worlds that have been visited since the wormhole was discovered.”

  “It’s a waste of time.” Phrebington started to walk toward the door. “This is an utter waste of time.”

  Anthony moved to block the door. “You haven’t been dismissed yet, Mr. Phrebington.”

  “Commander, it’s late, I’m tired, and I’m not in the mood for tiresome—”

  “I’m not terribly interested in what you’re ‘in the mood for,’ Mr. Phrebington.” Anthony spoke in a moderate tone, the picture of calm. “We’ve all got a job to do here, and it’s an important one. Lives depend on what this team accomplishes here. And by putting that uniform on, you have already committed to doing whatever is necessary to keep those lost lives to a minimum. So what you’re in the mood for really doesn’t enter into it. Now, you’re not leaving until Mr. Faulwell or I dismiss you. Is that clear, Mr. Phrebington?”

  In direct contrast to the barking tones with which DuVall had asked that last question three weeks earlier, Anthony was downright conversational, giving the words no more weight than if he were asking Phrebington for a cup of coffee. Yet it was much more effective, as the Gnalish turned tail (literally) and went back to where he’d been standing against the bulkhead.

  “There is a possibility we have not considered,” T’Lura said.

  “What’s that?” Bart asked, grateful to the Vulcan woman for changing the subject—or, rather, getting back to the original subject.

  “It is true that the Federation has had comparatively limited contact with the Dominion, and that Romulan and Klingon contact has been even less. However, there are other nations in the Alpha Quadrant.”

  Novac chuckled. “It’s not like the Cardassians or the Breen are going to share their cultural databases with us.”

  T’Lura steepled her hands together, elbows resting on the wardroom table. “I was referring to the Ferengi.”

  That got everyone’s attention. Bart noted that Anthony had a particularly wide-eyed look, as if he were disappointed in himself for not thinking of it first.

  Phrebington, of course, sounded more disappointed in T’Lura. “The Ferengi? If you were anyone else, I’d say you were joking.”

  “Insults are not necessary, Mr. Phrebington,” T’Lura said primly. “First contact with the Dominion was, in fact, made by the Ferengi Alliance, and they have made numerous trade agreements with a variety of Dominion races. It is quite possible that there are those in the Alliance who have the information we need.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Phrebington said. “Is this what we’ve come to? Relying on the Ferengi?”

  Grinning, Bart said, “Oh, the Ferengi can be damn reliable. You just have to know how to acquire the information.”

  Throckmorton frowned. “I don’t think Commander DuVall would be able to requisition gold-pressed latinum for this.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Anthony said. Bart couldn’t help but notice the mischievous smile on his face. “I think I can find what we need. I’ll need a couple of days to track down the DaiMon I’m thinking of.”

  Novac shrugged. “We’ll need that long to go through what we have on the Dominion in any case.”

  “At least,” Throckmorton said.

  “All right, let’s pursue this,” Bart said. “Meantime, the rest of us keep doing what we’ve been doing. Just because this is a possibility doesn’t mean it’s the only one. We may get lucky. Dismissed.”

  Phrebington muttered, “Lucky—that would be a first.”

  “War’s full of firsts, Mr. Phrebington,” Anthony said with a grin. “I’d say we’re due for one.”

  The next week was chock full of activity.

  Novac and Throckmorton went over the known data about Dominion linguistics, paltry as it was, and concluded, unsurprisingly, that there was no connection between it and the new code.

  Bart, T’Lura, and Phrebington continued to search for more ways to crack the code, with the same lack of success they’d been having since Bart’s arrival.

  Kerasus, unfortunately, spent the week in the infirmary, her inability to catch her breath during the meeting turning out to be a symptom of some lung trouble. The starbase doctor assured everyone that it was routine for someone of her advanced age, and she’d be released in a few days, “if not sooner.” The last was added in an exasperated tone that suggested to Bart that the older woman didn’t appreciate being bedridden when there was work to be done.

  As for Bart and Anthony, they had dinner at the Trill restaurant the following night to “finish off” the previous dinner. Then they met again the next night. Soon, it became a nightly ritual. After five days, Bart accompanied Anthony back to the latter’s quarters after the restaurant closed, si
nce they weren’t finished with their spirited discussion (Bart was having far too much fun, and they were being far too civil, for it to be categorized as an argument) about literature. Anthony didn’t like anything written since around 2350 or so, preferring the neo-Gothic books of the earlier part of the century. At the end of the night, Anthony promised to read Van Der Weir, though Bart suspected it was mostly just to shut Bart up about how excellent her work was.

  The morning that the Ferengi DaiMon finally arrived, Bart had spent the night in Anthony’s quarters, his happiness with his private life now in inverse proportion to his frustration with the lack of results in the crypto project.

  DuVall, Anthony, and Bart met with the Ferengi, a short, rotund man named Bikk. The DaiMon sat his portly form at the foot of the wardroom table, opposite DuVall.

  “So,” the commander said, “Mr. Mark tells me that you’re something of an expert on the Dominion.”

  “Something like that,” Bikk said with a toothy smile that made Bart want to run to his quarters and make sure all his possessions were still there. “I spent a year living in the Gamma Quadrant, supervising Ferengi interests on the behalf of Grand Nagus Zek.”

  Anthony nodded in appreciation. “That must’ve required a hefty bribe.”

  “Several dozen, actually, but those have been recouped a thousandfold. The Tulaberry wine business is quite profitable on that side of the wormhole. Not only that, but the person I had to give the most kickbacks to was later stripped of his standing by the Ferengi Commerce Authority, so now I keep even more profits. It’s quite a tidy arrangement.”

  “Especially since you’ve been selling information about the Dominion to allied powers,” Mark said. “Not to mention arranging the talks between Gul Dukat and the Vorta that led to Cardassia joining the Dominion.”

  Bart swallowed. He hadn’t known this. Based on the sputter that came from the head of the table, neither did DuVall.

  “You mean to tell me that you’re responsible—”

  “Now now, Commander,” Bikk said, not at all flustered by this revelation. “Don’t give me your superior, self-righteous Federation posturing. Outrage that a Ferengi will sell out to the highest bidder is a waste of your time and mine. If you didn’t think I could be bought, I wouldn’t be here.”